Lemonhearts and candy hearts, forever and ever.

Right near my building there's this big soccer field, and for a couple of years now it's represented more than just my neighbourhood to me: it's a place where I feel completely free to dream, like I have every opportunity in the world. I secretly call it my dream field. The times when I'm there while soccer games are going on are very different from the times when I'm there alone. After I first discovered the world of Jpop idols, I ran a lap around the field while imagining that I was training during an audition for Morning Musume; while walking home from school one day in the spring of grade 10, I put my backpack down on the bleachers and ran around in the sprinklers for a good half an hour, and then lay down on the bleachers and stared up at the blue sky, imagining that I was at the beach; this past winter I ran across the field through almost knee-deep snow - in running shoes - while singing Buono!'s Renai Rider along with my iPod at the top of my lungs. Sometimes I just stand in the middle of the field and stare out at it, and imagine coming back to this neighbourhood after becoming a big star and performing a concert right there in the field. Whenever I'm there, it's like I believe in my dreams just a little bit more.

So on my way home today, in the middle of the afternoon, I got off the bus a bit earlier than I normally would and walked home through the field (and then the park). And just walking across that field singing an A.F.I. song by myself is a beautiful moment to me.

And in the morning there is nothing left but what's inside of me. - Morningstar

♡

It's weird how I get to thinking about some of the most random things. Over the last few days, I've completely fallen for the lonelygirl15 series and its endlessly intriguing story, and I've started watching from both the beginning of the vlogs depicting Bree as a normal girl and the beginning of the new series, The Resistance. I'm really into it. I was reading about Bree's death and for some reason, I found myself wanting to watch the clip that took place immediately after Bree dies, in which Daniel, Jonas, Sarah, and Taylor go to the beach and deal with what just happened; this is weird for me, because I usually try to avoid sad things as much as possible, ever since I watched a Korean drama in grade nine that was way too upsetting for me to take (Sang Doo, Let's Go To School!). I actually wanted to watch Daniel break down into tears in Jonas's arms, as they both mourned Bree. Maybe this was under the influence of the stuff we've been doing in drama class recently - trying to connect to our "inner swamps" (if I was hearing that term right) and tap into our own dark emotions and past experiences in order to play roles. Perhaps I'm finally surrendering myself to what this unit is asking of me. Similarly, at another point last night I rewatched an episode of Smallville from its fifth season in which Clark almost died, and forced myself to go through the emotional experience of watching that again. But by the time I got to the end of the episode, I still did not want to keep watching that season, because of the episode that I know is coming in which a character actually does die. I don't know how I'll bring myself to watch that.

Once my thoughts returned to lonelygirl15, I started to think about the fact that the character of Bree, this good, sweet girl right about my age, had really died. But this thought was followed with surprising speed by another: "Her soul is still out there somewhere. It's okay." I've never come to that conclusion so quickly while thinking about even a fictional death before, but it is something that I believe in. It was, to be completely honest, after watching the live action series Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon when I was in grade nine that I began to believe in rebirth, to some extent anyway. At some point this turned into a general belief in souls, and an already existing soul being put into the body of a baby to live as a human on Earth. I now answer questions about abortion with, "It's okay, because it's not like a life is being ended forever. The soul that would have been put into that baby will go somewhere else." I've only actually said that to one person before, but I tend to feel that way now. Likewise, I can't help but believe that after a person of any age has died, their soul has gone somewhere, and it can come back eventually. Do I believe 100% that we all have been and will be reborn? No, I cannot say that I do. But it is something that I kind of believe in, now, and I would like to believe in it. I'm scared to get my hopes up, but I really feel like it just makes sense. I find myself imagining Bree's and that Smallville character's souls out there somewhere in their respective fictional universes, smiling. In terms of real people, I haven't given it as much thought, but that's my general outlook right now.

On a similar tangent, I've also started to wonder about how we as souls our connected to our human bodies, and the possibility of there being a disconnect. Just as thoughts of rebirth and afterlife comfort people, as we are scared of death and the thought of there being "nothing" after our lives on Earth end, I think this was something that stemmed from me trying to comfort myself. As my teen years have gone on, I've begun to feel less healthy, and worry about my health a lot more. In particular, I have some undiagnosed but obviously existing stomach/digestive issues that have caused me discomfort in the past year or so. When I start to feel unhealthy, I get very worried about it and scared until I calm myself down, and then get better. But in my thinking of souls, I've thought that maybe there can be a disconnect between the soul that is me and who I am, and the body that I inhabit. The resulting thought was, "It's okay if my body is hurt, because I am not my body." This would potentially allow me to feel that I as a person am okay, even if my body gets sick or injured. However, I do not fully agree with this, because I do indeed know that if I want to keep living on this Earth, I need to have this body. It is our human bodies that allow our souls to live here, and without these bodies, who knows where we would be? All I know is that I do want to keep living my life here, and in order for that to happen, I have to take care of my body, no matter what. Perhaps a good use for a disconnect between the body and soul would be to tell myself that I do not have to feel physical pain, because only my body is being afflicted, but I haven't tried that yet, and I doubt it will work too well anyway.

Still, since I've started thinking about this in the last few days, I've been taking some moments to look at my body differently, and wonder if I really do feel that I am in it, that it is a part of me. I look at my hands and the hangnails on my thumbs that I keep picking at and pulling off, and the red, sore skin around them, and I touch them, and wonder if this body is me. I look in the mirror and see myself, and take pride in my beauty when I'm feeling pretty, but is this visage really a part of who I am? That's hard to say, but I've spent so many years feeling self-conscious about my looks and trying to "fix" them that it seems that it would be a shame to take back now the work that I've done on my self-confidence, and just dismiss my body and my looks as not being important at all. What's on the inside may matter a whole lot more than how you look, but this is still an important aspect of me in this lifetime - it's what allows me to live as a human - so I ought to cherish it.

Those are my thoughts for now. For the record, I am not religious in any way, and these beliefs in souls and possible higher powers or spiritual beings who might be listening to me somewhere out there have only come to me in the last few years. I guess you could say that in high school I've become more agnostic, while I was more of an atheist in my younger days. I've been told that the term "agnostic" carries connotations that I'm unfamiliar with, though, so I really need to research that term more before I go declaring myself to be that. In any case, those are pretty much the most spiritual beliefs that I have (along with believing in some kind of magic, since I can't imagine this beautiful world being able to exist without some kind of magic making it happen), so I pretty much just poured my heart out there for anyone on Mindsay to read. Feel free to make whatever you will of these thoughts of mine.

I've had Falling Slowly by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová stuck in my head today, because I listened to it before going to sleep last night. (There was another song after that, but I don't remember what song that was.) I can't remember for sure where I first heard this song, but I suspect that it may have been played during the musical performance at a queer youth art exhibit I went to in the spring. A boy played guitar and sang, and after a few songs a girl joined in with her voice. They did a couple of duets - I believe they said that one of them was in the movie Juno, but I still haven't watched that - and I think this may have been one of them. I remember the female singer forgetting the harmony part for a line at one point and just singing the boy's part an octave higher until they got to the next line. I tend to notice those things ever since I've been a vocal student.

Anyway, I do remember the second time I heard this song. I was at summer camp, and the movie the two singers were in was being played outside, projected onto the side of one of the camp buildings if I'm not mistaken. I had been roaming around the camp (which was home that week to the jazz and rock divisions of a music camp - I was one of the rock campers, contributing my vocals to a band for the week) with some of my cabin mates, and as we walked back up the hill to our cabin, I heard the song playing in the movie and knew that I'd heard it somewhere before. It caught my interest then, so I took note of the movie's name and looked it up when I got home from camp, and downloaded it along with a number of other songs that I'd heard there. I still haven't watched the movie, but I enjoy listening to the song from time to time. Today I've been singing the female harmony parts to myself, and it makes me want to do a duet of the song with someone. I always feel proud of myself when I learn a harmony part, other than the alto parts I learn for school choir songs.

I've been wanting to listen to some Chinese music today, too; I listened to a Nicholas Teo song (新歌试唱 - Xin Ge Shi Chang) on the way to school after not finding any songs from the Smiling Pasta OST that I wanted to listen to on my iPod. (I've been rebuilding my old iPod's music collection on my new one, which I had to buy since the old one's screen cracked.) And it would seem that I'm in the mood for ballads by female vocalists on the Japanese side of things, since yesterday I started listening to a few Hamasaki Ayumi ballads - You, Powder Snow, and Heaven - and trying to learn the words to them. I felt the urge to listen to those after hearing Hinoi Asuka's most recent song, Suiren, for the first time. I think it was released in the spring, but I missed it completely, and only found out about it while searching for information on what the Hinoi Team members have been up to since the group stopped being active. It's a nice song, and Asuka co-wrote the lyrics and sounds great, so I hope she's able to further her career sometime in the near future. Avex really should give her more to do.

In choir and vocal class, we're learning a song called Remember. The choral version is arranged by Stephen Chatman, but the lyrics come from this poem by Christina Rossetti. The song is really nice, and quite easy to sing. I got to run the alto sectional at the beginning of our choir practice on Monday, during which we learned our part for this song, and when the entire choir assembled for the second part of our practice, the altos knew our part almost perfectly. It feels nice being a new section leader at times like that. :) We'll have mid-term tests in vocal class soon, so if we have to sing one of our choir or class pieces solo (as we usually do for this once yearly test), I'm going to sing my part from Remember, because it's easier than my parts from our other songs and I like singing it, too.

And I've been wanting to listen to some AFI, and a little Billy Talent, and I realized that W's Dekoboko Seventeen will fit well with a couple of other songs that I want to sing together at some point, probably on camera for my as yet unopened (and unpurchased) website. I think I'm done tweaking that lineup of songs.

That's all for now! :)